Modern people pay more and more attention on their cardiovascular health. Blood pressure monitor is one of the most common home-use devices for daily monitoring of cardiovascular health. Not only it is convenient to use, but also the high blood pressure is one of the risk factors related to many kinds of chronic diseases, such as, heart diseases, and diabetes.
Recently, owing to users' demands and also the technical development, the function of the blood pressure monitor has been improved a lot. In addition to the blood pressure, the blood pressure monitor now can provide more information related to the cardiovascular system, e.g., the average heart rate and the indication of irregular heartbeat. However, the function of irregular heartbeat detection provided by the blood pressure monitor should only be a referential indication for heart rhythm because it is provided based on the arterial pulses detected.
Arrhythmia is one common kind of heart rhythm problem whose symptom is the rate or rhythm of the heartbeat is too fast, too slow, or with an irregular rhythm. Some arrhythmias are life-threatening medical emergencies that can result in cardiac arrest. Others cause symptoms such as an abnormal awareness of heart beat (palpitations), and may be merely uncomfortable. Except of congenital and some heart diseases, some medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and stress, caffeine, smoking, alcohol etc. can also affect the heart's natural beating pattern and lead to arrhythmia. Thus, arrhythmia really is a symptom that related to not only heart itself but also the cardiovascular system and physical condition, and should pay more attention to. Up to now, the most accurate way to diagnose arrhythmia is ECG test.
According to the descriptions above, in addition to the blood pressure, it will be better to also consider the electrocardiogram as discussing the cardiovascular health. Therefore, if there can have a device simultaneously provide these two functions, blood pressure measurement and electrocardiogram measurement, it will be a significant improvement for cardiovascular monitoring. This will be very helpful in collecting these two most important data for doctor's diagnosis and also in long-term tracking of cardiovascular health.
For combining the electrodes on the conventional blood pressure monitor, one thing must be considered is what type of electrode should be used. Because it is a home-use device, the used electrode should be able to provide the user an easy, simple and convenient way to perform the electrocardiogram measurement. Therefore, the electrode which can achieve the measurement without using the conductive gel and at the same time can be mounted on the surface of the monitor will be a better choice. Besides, adopting this type of electrode will also facilitate the utilization to the original structure of the blood pressure monitor. Accordingly, the following issue will be how the electrodes is placed on the blood pressure monitor since, without the conductive gel, the contact stability between the user's skin and electrode which is related to the accuracy of measurement results becomes even more critical. As known, there are some situations might influence the acquired ECG signals, for example, the contacted area of the electrode, which portion of skin is employed to perform the measurement, and the posture of the user to contact the electrodes, and one of the most common sources of noises is the excessive muscle tension which is related to the user's posture during the measurement. Therefore, how to improve the structure and the electrodes arranged thereon to minimize the possible influences described above becomes an important issue.
Consequently, the object of the present invention is to provide a cardiovascular monitoring device which utilizes the structure of the conventional blood pressure monitor to position the electrode in an ergonomic way.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a cardiovascular monitoring device in which the positions of electrodes are designed to achieve a stable contact with the user's skin.